So I haven't posted a lot up here for a while, mostly because I have had a CRAZY busy couple of months, but I have a ton of stuff to post up here over the next while.  The first thing that I wanted to post about is that I started Class 2 (Psychology of Body Mechanics) at Animation Mentor!!!  My new mentor for this term is Pete Paquette, who like my last mentor works at Blusky Studios.  Some of the Q&A's that we've had with Pete so far have been the most entertaining that I've had since joining AM.  He doesn't sugarcoat things and he swears like a sailor, and I kind of love it.  He has also been doing walkthroughs in Maya during the Q&A's which have been really helpful.

For our first assignment we were given a pick list to choose from including things like walking down stairs, a sidestep, river dance, back flip, and other stuff like that.  I chose to do a roundhouse kick, because I was hoping that it wouldn't be too terribly difficult so that I could focus on making the weight of my character believable.  It turned out to be a lot more difficult than I had originally thought it would be...  For the first part of the assignment we either had to create our own video reference or go and find some on the internet.  Seeing as how the assignment was not to create an animation of someone failing a roundhouse or falling over I knew that filming my own reference would probably not be the most helpful route.  Luckily I found a couple of great roundhouse reference videos on youtube and this one especially was great in describing what was going on during the kick and showing it in slow motion as well.  I don't think that I have ever watched so many people being kicked in the head...There were many videos of people being on the wrong side of a roundhouse, and not just adults, little kids too....

The next step was to take the video reference and make thumbnails of the major poses to plan out our animation.

Sketch Blog-Imaginary

"Unicorns are not imaginary.  They just made up that rumor after people found out that they tasted like bacon."

So I left this week's sketch blog until the VERY last minute because I had a crazy busy week full of homework and a watercolor workshop and I did it while very over-tired and sleep deprived.....Can you tell?  I was pretty excited to draw a unicorn, although a unicorn standing on it's hind legs in a supermarket looks a little strange.  I did the background really quickly because I was tired and didn't really want to work on it any more.  I do like that the unicorn shops at a store that stocks liquid food, moonshine AND value pack tacos though.

So my sister got me to do some paintings of our dogs a little while ago (in exchange for a Princess and the Frog movie poster from Disney Movie Rewards....) and I'm finally getting around to posting pictures of them.  We have 3 dogs, all chihuahua's named Abby, Sophie and Amigo and they are all ridiculous.  My sister is a huge Ron Burns fan, so she asked me if I could do them in a similar style while still incorporating my own.  I tried my best!

I first did little thumbnail paintings to try and figure out what kinds of colors I would use and where the general placement of the dogs would be.

This first thumbnail painting turned out looking more like an angry Ewok type creature than a chihuahua.  It also let me see that just painting the dogs head with no body is kind of creepy...it looks like Sophie had a run in with a guillotine or the Cheshire cat.

The next thumbnail I did was of Abby, our long haired chihuahua.  I like how the eyes and the colors turned out.

The last thumbnail that I did was of Amigo.  He has an abnormally large head.

After the thumbnails I had a better idea of how I wanted the paintings to look, so I did the actual paintings on slightly larger canvases.

And here are some actual pictures of my dogs for comparison.

Amigo

Sophie

All 3 dogs

And then I found a ridiculous sultry picture of Amigo...

The End.

50th post! And Class 1 Progress Reel

So I just realized that my last post was the 50th one on this blog!  Happy 50 posts, blog!  For the occasion I got you a progress reel...More specifically my progress reel from Class 1:Basic Foundations at Animation Mentor!  The class was awesome!  My Mentor Scott Lemmer was super wonderful and always pushed me to do better while still being incredibly supportive at the same time.  My classmates were also super supportive and I thank them for all of their helpful feedback and comments!  I start Class 2 on Monday, and I'm super excited for it!  I'm really  looking forward to the break week that we get in between Class 2 and 3.  Animation is hard work!  Anyways, here's my Class 1 progress reel!

Animation Mentor Class 1-week 10 and 11

So after the Vanilla walk we got a chance to put a little bit of character into Ballie with a personality walk.  We were allowed to choose from pretty much any type of personality walk, happy, sad, old, young, etc.  I chose to to a sneaky walk.  This is my planning for my contact poses/breakdowns and extreme up and down positions.  

This walk turned out to be a little tricky because there is so much back and forth to it.  I had a lot of help from Richard Williams Animators Survival Kit though!

And this is how my initial blocking pass turned out.

We also had to do a Stu pose conveying exhaustion.

Here's how my final pose turned out.

I got some good feedback from my mentor as well as some awesome words of encouragement from Dreamworks animator and former AM student Ron Pucherelli!

In week 11 we had to take our blocking and throw it into spline, as well as putting into a 3/4 

view.  It was the first time we were asked to actually animate our assignments in a 3D view

 instead of just a side view which was a little scary...

  

Once I put my blocking into spline a lot of craziness happened as well and I spent a lot of time fixing and tweaking it.  I even pulled my first AM all-nighter and stayed up until 6am working on it.  Even with all of that time spent on it I still forgot to look at it in a front view to make sure that the weight was shifting properly from leg to leg with each step...I guess I'll have to do that in my revisions.  Anyway, this is how it turned out.

Because I was up so late working on it and because my brain goes a little crazy with no sleep I decided to make a background for Ballie to sneak past.  And because I fail at modeling I drew a picture of it.  And with that I give you 'Sleepy Bears'

I managed to get the BG into Maya, but I forgot how to playblast the file with textures and such, so I had to leave it without the bears.  This is what it would have looked like though.

Our final Stu pose of the term had to convey balance.  Here are my early sketches.

I decided to go with one inspired by the Karate Kid.

And once again my tired brain decided to give my assignments a background...

And that was my last assignment of Class 1! I had a great term a learned a ton!  Even having taken traditional animation classes before it was really good to refresh the basics/foundations of animation and I'm super excited to start Class 2!  Psychology of Body Mechanics here I come!

Alligator Vomit

So for my graphic novel class we had to do a 'slice of life' comic where we took something from our own lives be it happy/funny/sad/etc. and somehow make it into a comic strip.  I decided to use a somewhat traumatizing moment from 2nd grade where I was playing an alligator in the school play (I think it was about African animals?) and I threw up right in the middle of it.  My teacher and mother grabbed me out of the chorus and took me into the next room and got me cleaned up and I never saw that glorious alligator costume again.  Well at least it makes for a fun story.

Here's the inked version.  I had fun designing the animal costumes!

And because I am an over achiever I colored it too!

I fixed the audience panel because it was kind of crappy...  I've had a lot of comments on how nice the vomit looks.  The only downside to choosing this as my slice of life is that my nickname in class is now 'Alligator Vomit'...

Animation Mentor Class 1-week 8 and 9

Our assignment over these two weeks was to create a basic or 'vanilla' walk for the Ballie character.  The first week was just blocking the walk out and the second week we worked on polishing it up and finishing it.

Here's my plan for the blocking of the walk, with just the keys/contact positions, breakdowns/passing positions and the up and down extremes.

And here's my blocking pass in stepped mode.

We also had to pose Stu in a way that showed physical strength, so I did a lot of research on sports, martial arts and just general exercising.  

I tried posing Stu in some of the martial arts poses, but his extremely large head made a lot of them look strange.  I eventually settled on one of the shot-put poses.

I also learned how to render the Stu poses so that they look prettier and have little drop shadows! 

In week 9 we had to take our blocked vanilla walks out of stepped mode and put them in spline mode, adding inbetweens and such.  After a lot of tweaking mine looked like this.

I think that I might have worked on it for too long because watching the walk cycle seemed to put me in a sort of trance, and when it started walking in time to the music that I was listening to I found it way more amusing than I probably should have....

We also had to do a Stu pose portraying Concern for this week.  This was another pose that was hard to avoid cliches with.

I chose #8, and I kind of really like how this one turned out.